According to present technology, when it is desired to support the walls of excavations, and more particularly the walls of large dimension trenches dug in the ground, it is common to drive into the ground a plurality of piles, generally metallic and having a great length, in the form of profiled members into the ground side by side by means of air, steam or hydraulic hammers, the piles having a transverse structure providing mutual interconnection for example by means of bent-over longitudinal edges.
After all the required piles have been driven in the ground, the trench is dug between two rows of piles, the desired work is effected, such as placing a footing, a foundation, installing conduits of large diameter, etc., and the trench is filled up. The piles must then be pulled one by one from the ground in order to extend the trench or, when the work is finished, in order to recover the piles for use at other work sites.
It is easily understood that such an operation takes considerable time, requires specialized manpower and equipment and is consequently accomplished only at substantial costs.
The present invention remedies the inconveniences of the prior art by providing an articulated deformable panel structure which may be pre-assembled, or assembled on site in the trench, such as to be placed without difficulty for supporting the walls of a trench or other excavation, the articulated panel assembly progressively sinking partly under its own weight and partly with the help of equipment normally used during excavating, for example a bucket digger. The walls of the trench being dug are perfectly supported and consequently any risk of landslide is avoided during excavation as well as in the course of working in the trench, or laying a conduit in the trench. The articulated deformable panel assembly can subsequently be easily removed in totality or in part becasue after dismantling, the cross-bars or struts interconnecting a pair of panel assemblies forming, for example, a cofferdam, every single panel assembly made of a plurality of profiled panel elements or piles of appropriate material and strength may be removed by deforming in its own plane the rectangular panel of the articulated assembly, such as to obtain deformable parallelograms by consecutive longitudinal displacement of an end of the panel assembly followed by a displacement of the other end, that is by lifting one end of the deformable panel assembly, then the other, until the panel assembly is extracted from the ground.
It is also possible to drive the panel assemblies in a manner similar to that hereinabove described, by pushing alternatively on one end or the other of the deformable panel assemblies, or the assembly of individual panel elements which are held together by means of ties permitting relative motion of one panel element relative to the others.